The DNA of You and Me: A Novel

By Andrea Rothman

“Refreshing.... Asks urgent questions about female ambition. Fans of Lab Girl have found a worthy successor.”—Real Simple

A powerful debut novel—a wonderfully engaging infusion of Lab Girl, The Assistants, and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine—that pits the ambition of scientific discovery against the siren call of love.

Emily Apell arrives in Justin McKinnon’s renowned research lab with the single-minded goal of making a breakthrough discovery. But a colleague in the lab, Aeden Doherty, has been working on a similar topic, and his findings threaten to compete with her research.

To Emily’s surprise, her rational mind is unsettled by Aeden, and when they end up working together their animosity turns to physical passion, followed by love. Emily eventually allows herself to envision a future with Aeden, but when he decides to leave the lab it becomes clear to her that she must make a choice. It is only years later, when she is about to receive a prestigious award for the work they did together, that Emily is able to unravel everything that happened between them.

A sharp, relevant novel that speaks to the ambitions and desires of modern women, The DNA of You and Me explores the evergreen question of career versus family, the irrational sensibility of love, and whether one can be a loner without a diagnostic label.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780062857835

Andrea Rothman

Andrea Rothman was born in Brooklyn NY and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Her debut novel, THE DNA OF YOU AND ME, was published by William Morrow-HarperCollins in March of 2019. The novel has received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal, and won an award for Best Popular Fiction in English at the 21st International Latino Book Awards in Los Angeles. Prior to being a fiction writer, Rothman was a research scientist at the Rockefeller University in New York, where she studied the sense of smell. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and was a fiction editor for the VCFA journal of the arts-Hunger Mountain.  Her essays and short stories have appeared in print and online journals such as Literary Hub, Lablit, Cleaver Magazine, and Litro Magazine among others, and can be viewed at www.andrearothman.com.  Rothman lives with her husband and two children in Long Island, New York. She is at work on a second novel. 

Book preview

Part One

The Wrong Genes

Chapter 1

Smell is an illusion, MY FATHER USED TO TELL ME: INVISIBLE molecules in the air converted by my brain into cinnamon, cut grass, burning wood. Heat was a measure of receptors in my skin, and brown was not brown but a combination of light waves captured by cones in my eyes. The world as I knew it, as I felt it to be, was the result of my own personal experience, and so it was up to me to make the best of my understanding of it.

If it is true that things are what you make of them, it can be argued that it was I who got in the way of Aeden’s research, his life, and not the other way around. After all, he had been in the lab for three years when I first set foot there. Three years is a grain of sand in a scientist’s life, but when you’ve been working in someone else’s lab for that long you begin to hunger, irrationally, for a breakthrough in your work: your modest but unquestionable contribution to human knowledge.

Tomorrow I will be receiving an award—an important one. This award marks in many ways the true beginning of my career, and a point of no return in my life, the one I sometimes fear will have me forever looking back. At least that is how it feels now, and how it felt then, when I first got the news last month.

Giovanna, a senior postdoc in my laboratory, was in my office. It was our last meeting before her analysis of the strain of olfactory-impaired mice she engineered. The phone on my desk was ringing. It had been ringing for a while. Giovanna raised her head from the X-ray film on her lap and looked at me with a questioning smile. The room, though fully lit, felt as dim as the inside of a cave. I stood up from the desk and walked around her, over to the window, and raised the blinds. The light pouring through the glass stung my eyes momentarily, until I was able to see it: the Hudson flowing like melted steel in the distance.

You know what they’re saying out there about you? Giovanna said.

No. I turned from the window, not wanting to comment.

Her eyes followed me across the room, back to my chair. On my desk the phone was blinking. They’re saying that it could be you this year. That’s what people are saying, Emily.

I stretched my arm across the desk. Reluctantly Giovanna deposited her film in my hand. Hazy, I said, holding it between us like a veil. The bands of DNA are hardly distinguishable from background noise. You’ll need to design a better probe, Giovanna.

Please tell me you didn’t hear what I just said.

And if it is me, I said. What about it? The results were unambiguously clear, despite the background noise. All the genes in the cocktail had been integrated into the genome of her mice. As usual, I was being overly cautious.

"Don’t pretend that you don’t care, Emily. I know you care. You know you care."

How old are they? I asked.

Seriously? Giovanna said. Her hand was casually resting on the sphere of her belly. Should I remind you that if you win this award you could go on to receive the Nobel Prize?

I really couldn’t care less about the award nomination, I said. Now tell me, are your mice old enough to analyze?

Giovanna gave me one of her sidelong looks of resignation and drew out a spreadsheet from her marble notebook. That must have been when the phone began to ring again. Not the landline on my desk, but the one inside the raincoat draped over my chair. It was actually barking, a feature I much prefer to any other kind of ringtone. I let it bark. Giovanna raised her head from her spreadsheet and stared at me. I looked away from her, back at the film, and would have probably let the phone go on barking had it not been for her pregnant frame suddenly looming over me.

If you don’t answer that, I will, she said.

I patted the raincoat pockets and found the phone and raised it to an ear. I knew it was the call I’d been looking forward to and dreading in equal measure for the last ten years. Even saying hello into the receiver I found it hard to suppress the tremor in my voice.

Dr. Apell? It was a woman’s voice, her tone exceedingly polite.

Yes. Speaking.

Good morning, Dr. Apell. You have been selected to receive the Lasker Award in basic medical research for your contribution to neuroscience. The ceremony will be held in September . . .

After the call ended I just sat there, staring at the film on my desk. The bands of DNA were swaying like ships in a storm. I made a fist with my left hand. The other hand was still holding on to the phone.

What’s wrong? Giovanna asked me.

That was the Lasker Foundation.

Oh my God. She cupped her nose. Oh. My. God.

I raised a hand to stop her from yelling but she already was, yelling and rushing out of the office with the wobbling gait I sometimes envy her for, suspecting as I do that I will never have children.

A moment later there was a piercing whistle outside my door, and after a while the sound of people flooding the hallway. That was when I stood up from my desk and left the room. On my way to the exit doors at the end of the hallway there was a sea of feet I was somehow able to weave my way through without tripping into anyone. When I raised my eyes from the floor I could see faces from distant labs moving toward mine. I flung the doors open, turned into the nearest elevator, and dove inside it, catching in the mirror, before the doors closed behind me, the department secretary’s perplexed smile, and an unopened bottle of champagne in her hand.

* * *

OUT ON THE STREET A MUTED RAIN WAS BEATING THE PAVEMENT. I pushed through the revolving doors of the building, past the institute’s blue awning, and walked for several blocks without any particular aim. It took me a while to realize I had left my raincoat behind in the office and was soaked through, a while longer to recognize that I’d been walking east all along, toward the old campus.

At the university entrance a man in a khaki uniform eyed me suspiciously from the guard booth. I was prepared to invent some story about having an appointment with Justin McKinnon, but he made no move to stop me from going through the gates.

Climbing the stairs up to the floor of the lab, I heard the sound of drilling, and smelled burnt rubber. The hallway, when I reached the top of the stairs, was hazed in dust, and looked to be considerably narrower than I remembered it. In the main room, from which all the noise seemed to be coming, the workbenches had been gutted. In their place small cubicles were being erected, approximately six cubicles per bay, the combined areas of which seemed somehow to fall short of the original space—as if it had shrunk with time. Even the aisle that cut across the room was significantly shorter in real life than the infinitely long and protracted one of my memory. I inched farther down the hallway, toward Justin’s office.

The MCKINNON LABORATORY plaque was still there, fixed to the door with nails, but the frosted pane that had set Justin’s door apart was coated in grime. I stood outside, thinking. Or rather, trying to make up my mind. I hadn’t been back to the lab in nearly a decade; had avoided the campus, and running into Justin, like the plague. But now that I was there I would at least say hello to him and mention the news, which he would find out about sooner or later. I knocked on the pane and waited. No one answered. I rubbed an opening across the grime with the heel of my hand and was pressing my face to the glass, trying in vain to see through it, when a man opened the door from inside.

He was young, about thirty or so, with tousled red hair, and casually dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. The anteroom behind him was crammed with lab equipment, and sitting at the desk where Justin’s secretary had sat was a young woman, her dark hair pinned to the crown of her head, her face leaning into a microscope. The little girl beside her was building a tower out of biological slides. She looked at me and I realized she was the daughter of the man standing in front of me, and that they were a family.

Is Justin here? I asked.

Justin? the young man said.

Isn’t this the McKinnon Lab?

Not anymore. He tightened his grip on the door handle. I’m the new lab head.

I don’t understand, I said, though I probably did, at that point, understand.

Justin McKinnon closed up shop last month.

Justin retired?

I’m afraid so.

I folded my arms across my waterlogged dress, allowing the information to sink in. Justin retired at age fifty. Justin, whose life had revolved around the lab. What would he do with himself for the next twenty or thirty years, or however long he had to live? A chill was starting to seep into my bones.

May I ask who you are? the young man asked me.

The little girl’s glass tower had collapsed. Emily, I offered. Emily Apell.

Apell? he said, looking closely at me. I held his gaze unblinkingly, and saw a spark of awareness register behind his clouded smile. The same Apell who discovered that family of genes? He snapped his fingers in the air. What are they called?

Pathfinders, I said.

Yes. He held out his hand to mine and I shook it. Pathfinders, he repeated, looking both impressed and disoriented.

The woman behind him had risen from her chair. Come inside and have some tea with us. You look like you’re freezing to death.

The young man was holding the door wide open for me to step inside. The two of them were smiling at me from ear to ear. I wondered if they knew about the award, but of course they didn’t. It would take several weeks for the Lasker winners to be announced, my name broadcast nationwide, on radio and television and the web. Their smiles, I was grateful to realize, had nothing to do with the award, and all to do with the discovery itself.

The rest of that morning I sat in the campus cafeteria with a cup of coffee, watching the thinning rain descend upon the East River, and it’s where I’ve been coming to since, for nearly a month now. Especially with the developments of recent days, and the impending awards ceremony, I often find myself wanting to be alone, in a place where no one will know or remember me. After two o’clock in the afternoon there’s hardly anyone here. I sit at a table by a window and stare out across the glass for hours, allowing my thoughts to come and go. But today I begin trying to put those thoughts together and in order, as if the past were some very long and misrouted nerve ending whose folds and kinks I’m untangling, straightening out so that it might find its proper path, the one it strayed from long ago.

I do it for Aeden. Mainly, though, I do it for me.

Chapter 2

THAT CRISP SEPTEMBER MORNING WHEN I FIRST arrived in the lab, fresh from graduate school, was twelve years ago now.

Justin led me past the trafficked hallway into a cavernous room with an unbroken view of the Queensboro Bridge and bays running the length of a sun-doused aisle like rows in an airplane. In every bay white-coated men and women around my age were absorbed in some task or other—or not absorbed at all. Some of them looked up to watch me move past them along the aisle in my outmoded jeans and tangerine sweater and a pair of knee-high boots whose flat soles, I realized with a knot in my stomach, only accentuated my meager height.

I steadied my dangling laptop on a hip bone and tried to make eye contact with everyone, and to smile, stopping wherever Justin stopped and opening my hand to whomever he saw fit to introduce me to: David Hobbs, Steven Kane, Eduardo Campos, Haru Oshiro, Mary Goodman, Wendy Nguyen . . . I matched their names to those in the bylines of the research papers from the lab that I’d read, and when memory failed me I attempted to figure out their status in the lab according to their appearance, guessing the fresh-faced people to be graduate students and the others, those with the complicated smiles and lines indented on their foreheads, to be the postdocs whose surnames had headed the grander papers.

By the time we’d reached the final stretch of the room I was perspiring from the effort of having to smile at people I didn’t know, and uncomfortably aware of the buttery odor exuding from my scalp. I was relieved to make out the empty bay at the end of the room where I would be sitting: meant for only one person, instead of the usual two. We were about to reach it when Justin stopped in his tracks in front of the neighboring bay. A tall man stood there, his shoulders slouched, pouring DNA into the wells of a gel. We were standing only inches away from him, but it wasn’t until Justin cleared his throat that he acknowledged us, and even then he was slow to react, slow to rise to his full height and turn his eyes to us.

This is Emily Apell, Justin told him. Your new neighbor.

Aeden brushed a hand against his faded jeans and, looking at me, allowing just enough time for his eyes to lock with mine in a kind of forced welcoming, shook my hand. Aeden Doherty. Nice meeting you, Emily. Without another word he retook his multichannel pipette and went back to filling the wells of his gel.

Behind him, framed against the sunlit windowpane of their shared bay, a pretty brunette was sitting at a desk with a hardcover notebook opened across her lap. Her face was steadied on mine but when I made a point of meeting her eyes she stared down, at the notebook.

Allegra Meltzer, Justin said, and to Allegra: Allegra, this is Emily.

Allegra raised her large green eyes to mine, nodded, and looked back down.

It wasn’t exactly a welcome party, and though neither Doherty nor Meltzer rang a bell, I imagined they were senior postdocs, with projects that were going somewhere, not interested in a newcomer like me. Yet I kept hoping, after Justin had seen me to my bay and rushed off saying he needed to be somewhere, that they would approach me to inquire what I was doing in the lab, and maybe even ask me to join them for lunch. Why not?

As a graduate student in Champaign, Illinois, I had identified three new members of a well-known family of genes involved in anticancer drug resistance, a study that had led to a respectable publication in a specialized journal for cancer research. It wasn’t the sort of journal one might find in an airport terminal, on the shelves of Hudson News: not Scientific American, or the high-profile Science or Nature, where people in Justin’s lab usually published their work. But then, I wasn’t the kind of hands-on scientist they were, the kind of scientist one encountered in most labs back then. I was a bioinformatician. I used computers to analyze and interpret the biology encoded in DNA, and liked to think of myself as a sort of Watson-and-Crick of the new millennium.

Though what I wanted, what I was really looking for, I suppose, was to feel that I was one of them, one of the confident scientists in Justin’s flashy lab, instead of the person in the small and obscure research lab I’d been a week ago.

And so when Aeden appeared at the foot of my bay sometime around noon and asked me if I’d had anything to eat, I immediately stood up from my desk, as if I’d been expecting him.

* * *

FIVE MINUTES LATER WE WERE HEADED ALONG A PATH OF IVORY slabs bordered by tall research buildings and young maples, toward the cafeteria. The leaves of the trees were still green, despite it being late September and technically fall. The sky above was cloudless and deep blue, the air brisk and smooth. Aeden was staring fixedly ahead.

There was a complicated intensity about his face, a general detachment in his manner with me that made me feel strangely at a loss. I noticed the timer clipped to his pullover and wondered if he’d left an experiment running in the lab.

We were nearing the wide quadrangle of buildings at the end of the path when I recalled seeing Doherty and Meltzer in two very technical and low-profile papers from the lab, which I had followed with difficulty, not having any hands-on experience manipulating genes. I read your two papers, I said. I think they’re awesome.

Aeden shot me a bloodless look. Oh, please, he said, matter-of-factly. I could smell nicotine on his breath. It’s just a load of technical crap.

The kind everyone in the field should be familiar with, I said sincerely.

How do you like it here? he asked me, changing the subject.

The campus?

New York.

I just got here. This morning, actually.

He looked at me closely, holding me in his light gray eyes for a long moment, as though he were seeing me for the first time. You came straight to the lab?

I searched his face for the unfavorable opinion his even tone had not conveyed, and did not find it, or any other opinion. Unlike most people I’d met, he wasn’t judging me. I was anxious to get to work, I said, then, wanting to explain myself further, The DNA database is the reason I came here, to this lab.

Aeden gave a slight shrug. He didn’t bother to inquire what exactly about the database had brought me to the lab. His eyes were no longer even on me. The place we were headed to was visible in the distance, and his gaze was stubbornly anchored on it.

I wondered why he’d asked me to lunch, but didn’t ask him. Or rather, chose not to. If there was an ulterior motive behind his invitation I didn’t want to know about it.

The cafeteria at AUSR (American University of Science Research) was a one-story structure poised like a melting icicle at the edge of the East River. From a distance the roof looked almost deformed, until gradually the shape of a spiral staircase began to emerge, and on closer inspection the two helices of a molecule of DNA, bound by slabs of glass. Inside, the seating area was magnificently large, with carpeted floors and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the watchtowers of the Queensboro Bridge: oxidized little

Reviews for The DNA of You and Me

[whitreidtan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My sister is the scientist in our family. She's a vet with a Masters in Toxicology. I'm the English major who had to sit in the hallway for the duration of high school fetal pig dissection because I got hysterical thinking about cutting into Wilbur. But just because I am squeamish doesn't mean I'm not fascinated by science. Because I am. Just from a distance. Especially if it requires dissection or euthanizing lab animals; I'm completely fine with sciences like geology though, one of my favorite subjects in college. And I do love to read about science and the amazing things that scientists are researching and discovering, what drives them to their field of study, the process of their work, and what it might say about us and our world. So Andrea Rothman's novel The DNA of You and Me was a completely engaging and wonderful read about the science world and one woman in it.Emily Apell is a bioinformatician who has just received that call that she's won a very prestigious prize. As she processes the overwhelming news, she thinks back to what first set her on the path toward this major achievement. Growing up with her chemist father, she was steeped in scientific research quite young. And as an only child with a severe environmental allergy, her childhood was very much spent indoors not around other people so her social skills never quite developed the same way that others' did. Even in adulthood, she is incredibly socially awkward and she struggles to make connections with others. Moving to a prestigious new lab where she is looking for a gene or genes in the olfactory system that create a sort of smell map, she is both consumed by her research and intensely aware of fellow lab mate, Aeden, who, with his technician, is also looking for these genes. They might be in the same lab but they are definitely in competition with each other, at least until they are forced to work together and an antagonistic and bumbling relationship forms. But when tensions and hostility in the lab prove impossible, Emily must choose between the research she's dedicated her life to or the promise of a different life with Aeden.The framing device of the impending award is well done as it leads Emily to look back a decade prior and wonder if her life could have been different, if it should have been different. Rothman has done a fantastic job creating in Emily a character who is afraid she doesn't have the emotional ability to connect with others that seems to come so easily to people around her. In fact, she is told by other characters, that she is distant and incapable of the depth of feeling that most people have, once as a compliment and once as a warning and insult. And yet this unemotional character feels deeply, absorbing hurt after hurt so that the reader has a lump in their stomach for her. She is so very alone, even in the midst of people. Told through Emily's eyes, Aeden is a far less sympathetic character, perhaps because she doesn't understand his motivations towards her as well as she understands her own position. Their relationship is not a give and take; it is as uncomfortable as the principals. They move from antagonism to emotionless sex, to something that is supposed to be more but that doesn't quite ever reach the richness to which it aspires. The atmosphere of the lab is well drawn, competitive to the point of being cutthroat, where even those driven by a desire to further science will resort to underhanded actions. The daily work, the diligence, the frequent failures, and the much rarer successes of a research lab weave through the narrative, driving the plot forward to its climax. The idea of isolating the genes that help us smell is completely fascinating and the sense of smell pervades much of the story thematically with Emily being acutely aware of smells and their role in her memories. There are many descriptions of the smell of her late father, Aeden's particular scent, a grad student's overwhelming perfume, the memory triggered by a peppermint, and more. Emily may be different but the reader feels for her deeply, for the little girl looking out at a world of people whose reactions are foreign and feel exclusionary and for the adult woman who still feels that way and tries to wrap herself in protective layers to avoid the hurt that she sometimes encounters as a loner. Emily is an atypical main character who really takes up residence in your heart. This is a poignant read about science and relationship, about whether some people are better suited to be alone, and the sacrifices that people make along their chosen paths framed within a story about a really smart woman in STEM.

[mishker-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Emily Apell knows exactly what she want to do with her life.  When she gets the chance to join a renowned research lab, Emily knows this is her chance to make a breakthrough in the science of smell. Emily has never felt like she fit in with other people.   However, lab colleague Aeden intrigues Emily like no one before.  Unfortunately, Aeden seems to have no interest in Emily and only sees her as a competitor.  Aeden's research is surprisingly similar to to what Emily was brought in to work on. When Emily's research proves more promising and Aeden is faced with being kicked out of the lab, Emily makes a decision to make Aeden an equal partner in her research. Emily and Aeden begin a clunky relationship, but as things progress Emily realizes she is in uncharted waters.  Years later, as Emily is about to accept an award for her work, she tries to unravel what happened in their relationship.The DNA of You and Me is a very different type of romance where a neurodivergent tries to piece together what happened to a relationship that almost changed her goal in life.  I could tell Emily's character was a bit different from the beginning and yet I could relate to her not attaching to any people and feeling like she was just fine without them.  I have to admit I found the science part of the book way more fascinating than the relationship part.  It was clear that the author had experience in the lab as well as an extensive knowledge of the science of smell.  I enjoyed reading about the process of tirelessly searching databases, finding something that looks promising, isolating the gene and seeing if it does what is expected.  The reality of research science is also highlighted, that most of what is worked on is a failure- or at least not what was expected.  Aeden was a conundrum to me, approaching his relationship with Emily as something he needs to hide, almost hate fueled and willing to ruin everything that she has worked on for what he believes is love.  I understood Emily's attraction more since Aeden seemed to be the first person she ever clicked with, ever felt that she needed to be around.  In the end, I felt that Emily made the right decisions for herself and highlighted the strength of women in the STEM field.  This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

[readhanded · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Emily is a scientist studying DNA and searching for what strands of DNA control sense of smell. A lifelong loner obsessed with her work, she does not see her new position being any different. Then, she meets Aeden, who ends up being her partner in the project. From the start, their relationship is strange and unhealthy, and really it just gets worse as Emily gets closer to a major breakthrough that will make her career.Definitely not one of the top books I read this year, but not the worst either. The writing style felt dry to me, but perhaps fitting considering that the narrator is a research scientist. As a reader, I definitely felt like Emily was keeping her distance, even from her reader. Clever, considering Emily's personality, but I'm not sure it worked. And even though I think the reader is supposed to like Aeden, just as Emily does, I never did or understood Emily's attraction to him. He's a pretty big jerk throughout. The main tension in the novel is supposed to be this choice Emily has to make between Aeden and what he represents (marriage, family) and her work and career. But, from my point of view, the choice should not have been difficult at all. To me, Aeden would not be very difficult to give up.

[kdabra4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Scientists, the science of genes, a dedication to endless hours of lab work and lab mice, and the loneliness that results from such anti-social behavior -- having just watched the finale of The Big Bang Theory I was reminded of Sheldon and how he avoided personal interactions like the plague. Emily, daughter of a chemist, was destined to become a scientist, and getting paired up on her gene project with elusive but handsome Aeden she was destined to fall for him, even if she did feel she was meant to be alone in life, that she was immune to the normalcy of having friends and family.It was my thinking of Sheldon that enabled me to survive all the science in this book, and to not give up on poor lonely Emily's personal life. I wasn't a die hard fan of the show, so maybe I'm way off in my comparison, but it helped me here. The outcome of Emily's project and her Aeden relationship, both highly unpredictable, kept me turning the pages. A very unusual but likeable character, and book.A win from LibraryThing.com.

[jamiebh-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to love this book because I’m not a huge fan of romance and the relationship between Aeden and Emily seemed much more realistic to me but it still wasn’t relatable and I feel like the story relied way too heavily on scientific speak which made the story feel a bit clunky at times. That being said I really enjoyed the ending and felt like Emily’s character was finally making some progress at personal growth. This book reminded me of other quirky love stories but didn’t reach the same level of relatability I was looking for.

[fastforward-46127 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unfortunately there were more negative than positive things with the story. When I finished reading, I was left feeling confused about what exactly the author was aiming for when she wrote the book. And I'm not trying to say that in a mean way, more I just don't think I ever fully understood the main character and therefore it was difficult for me to know what to take away from the book. Graduate student Emily has been hired to work in a lab in New York. And let's just say things can get competitive when your coworkers are extremely focused and driven. Everyone hopes their research will produce groundbreaking findings. But when you eat, sleep, and breathe science practically 24/7 is there time for any type of a social life? And for someone like Emily who much prefers keeping to herself, is interacting with others something she even wants?I love how this book featured a female character working in the scientific community. The science was heavily featured in the story and I'm not going to pretend I understood it all, but I'm glad it was included, although maybe to a lesser extent, as it's not something you typically get to see in women's fiction. And speaking of the genre of women's fiction, I think your best bet is to approach the book interested in the character rather than thinking this is going to be some light and fluffy romance. The author has not only a scientific background but also holds as MFA in creative writing. Unfortunately, even though I liked certain elements of the story, as a whole I thought the execution was off. The transitions at times felt disjointed and sometimes it felt like I was reading a straight up science book rather than a fictional story. I just wish the book would have worked better for me because I do like to support these types of stories featuring smart and independent women.I won a free copy of this book from LibraryThing but was under no obligation to post a review. All views expressed are my honest opinion.

[katybee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Chances are fairly good that if you know what an Eppendorf pipet is, you might enjoy this rather unusual novel. This is the story of Emily, a young woman navigating the intense demands of working in genetic research and it's set in laboratories right in the middle of test tubes and mice sacrificing. There is also an important romance in this book but somehow, it’s just not as intriguing as the lows and highs of cutting edge DNA research. It's frustrating to read about the power dynamics with the men, especially the head of the lab. Emily is often sacrificing a lot and work demands go hand in hand with loneliness.In the end, the compelling part of this novel is the view of a woman working as a dedicated professional scientist with integrity. I’ve worked in laboratories and this really brought back past experiences wearing a white lab coat.

[strongstuff · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is a lot that is refreshing about this novel; Emily is a young, smart, and ambitious woman, and seemingly confident in her professional abilities. She rarely doubts her intellect and skills and knows what she wants in the laboratory. It’s exciting to read about a woman excelling in the STEM fields and Emily, herself, is truly a fascinating character as she struggles to balance her naturally introverted and driven personality with an unexpected love interest and the challenges that arise out of being a working woman. But the relationships in her life are strange. She is dominated by two manipulative and selfish men and it is troublesome to watch her struggle with herself to please them both while being true to herself. I wish we could have seen Emily make some genuine friendships which would have better allowed her to explore her personality, interests, and goals. Instead, we just get these men imparting their expectations on her. Emily deserved better.

[carolesrandomlife · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I did like this book even if I didn't love it. This was a book that was very different than I thought it would be. I thought that this was a romance. It was labeled romance, the book's description sounds romantic, and even the title sounds like a romance novel. But it didn't feel like a romance. Yes, there is a relationship in the book but not one that I could get excited about. I still found this book to be very readable and did enjoy the experience.This book was really heavy on the science which I liked. It might have been a little too detailed at times but I like that kind of thing so it worked for me. I found the research that Emily and Aeden were doing really interesting and was eager to see how their experiments would turn out. I had some trouble with Emily and Aeden's relationship. They had no chemistry. None at all. I felt no passion between them. I also don't think that this relationship was really healthy. Things started between them with some rather odd sexual encounters. I felt like Emily was being taken advantage of more than anything, especially since one of the encounters were less than consensual. When I read a romance, I need a couple that I can cheer towards their happily ever after but with this pair, I felt that they really shouldn't be with each other.This book is told from Emily's point of view and I did find her to be a really interesting character. She was raised by her father in a lab so it was really no surprise that she felt at home in a lab. She is awkward in social situations and would really rather focus on work. While it is not confirmed, the story hints that Emily might be on the spectrum. I really did want to see good things come for Emily.I did enjoy this book even if I had some issues with it. I found this to be a very quick read and I am glad that I picked it up. I wouldn't hesitate to read more from this author in the future.I received a review copy of this book from William Morrow.

[whiskeyinthejar-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.


“I don’t think it’s just you, Emily. I think we all feel like mutants in our own way.”

In a very strong debut, Rothman gives us a contemporary fiction slice of life story featuring Emily, a daughter of a single father, starting off in the science research community. As a child, Emily had an allergy to cut grass and had to stay indoors in the summer, essentially isolating her from playing around with kids her own age. Raised only by her father as her mother dropped her off as a baby and never looked back, he immersed her a lot in his science work. Trying to isolate the genes that allow us to smell, with hopes of possibly one day fixing anosmia, Emily ends up in a lab rife with personal and job political pitfalls.

The story started off with giving us a peak at the ending and then rewinding to show how Emily got where she was. Told completely from Emily's point of view, the story is broken up into parts that worked really well to help conceptually understand where and how Emily is mentally and emotionally at each part. The background on her childhood, reason for not being able to be outdoors, relationship with father, and how this molded her, gave a good emotional impact building block for why her work was important to her and even her feelings toward Aeden, her co-worker and love interest.

As this is, what I call, a slice of life story, it is a glimpse into one character's life, they and the other characters don't always act in ways that the reader wants them to. I thought it was interesting how the parallels were there to be drawn between Aeden and Emily's father. Emily mentions similarities between the two and then how she can't quite connect with Aeden the way she wants to, possibly why she very quickly became fixated on Aeden. Aeden was a bit hard to read as we don't get his point of view, did he feel guilt tripped or did his feelings just naturally grow from being around Emily? However, this uncertainty did put the reader in the same boat with Emily and as she seems to struggle overall with human connection; you'll feel it.

The science in the story was interesting and if you go in with the desire to soak in this world for awhile, you won't feel overwhelmed or lost. I'm definitely a layman with this field and thought everything was explained and relayed in a clear interesting manner, very few times did I feel maybe some in depth moments could be edited out. I do wish I could have gotten a better feel for Emily and some of the emotional moments could have reached deeper; her relationship with her father seemed like a rich well. I also thought her relationship with her boss Justin could have been explored more.

I did think, for a debut, the author had an amazing ease of writing style that flowed well and kept me engaged to keep reading; the pages flew by. However, I ended up feeling like I didn't quite have a solid handle on Emily, her growth emotionally and career wise, was left somewhat open. Competitiveness and relationships in the workplace, why we do the things we do, and destiny versus our own decision making were all leading themes in this story about Emily as she searched for scientific and emotional answers. A slice of life story, where mice hold a lot of the answers.

“[...]because at the end of the day science has nothing to do with luck, but with truth, and the truth does not always make one happy.”